Architecture essays

And yet a concern for architecture and design is too often described as frivolous, even self-indulgent. The Architecture of Happiness starts from the idea that where we are heavily influences who we can be – and argues that it is architecture’s task to stand as an eloquent reminder of our full potential. Whereas many architects are wary of openly discussing the word beauty, the book has at its centre the large and naïve question: ‘What is a beautiful building?’ It amounts to a tour through the philosophy and psychology of architecture, which aims to change the way we think about our homes, streets and ourselves.

A common mistake that architecture
teams (or for smaller projects the architecture owner) will make is to ignore existing and pertinent
artifacts, such as network or deployment diagrams that
describe your organizations existing technical
infrastructure, enterprise-level business models (use
case models, process diagrams, workflow diagrams,
corporate business rules, and so on), or corporate
deployment standards (for workstations, branch offices,
etc.) that your system is expected to conform to. Yes, the existing artifacts may be out of date or
simply not apply to your effort, but you should at least
make an effort to examine them and take advantage of the
existing work wherever possible. A little bit of reading or discussion with the
right people is likely to save you significant effort
later on.
In other words, don't forget to
r euse
existing artifacts
whenever possible .

Why Architecture
Owners?
For any
reasonably
complex
system
you're
going to
need to
invest
some
time
architecting
it.
First you'll
do some
up front
architecture
envisioning
to get
you going in the right direction
and then you'll need to evolve
the architecture over time as
your project progresses.
Although it's convenient to
believe that a
Disciplined
Agile
Del ivery
(DAD)
team will always be in agreement
as to the architecture of the
solution, the reality is that
many agile developers are smart,
strong-willed people and teams
of such don't always come to
agreement. Someone needs
to lead/facilitate the team with
regards to the evolution of the
architecture. Speaking
about leadership, the person in
the role of team lead (what
Scrum refers to as a "Scrum
Master", see
Translating Scrum Terminology
for what I think about this
inane term) will often also be
in the role of architecture
owner. This isn't always
the case, particularly at scale,
but it is very common for
smaller agile teams.

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